


Within You

by shepavellan



Series: Hide Your Face So The World Can Never Find You [3]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Be Careful What You Wish For, Beauty and the Beast Elements, Cameos, Costume Parties & Masquerades, Dark Magic, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fairy Tale Curses, Kind of a slow burn, The power of friendship, as is par for the course with me, except we have much less goblins and 100 times more fae stuff, maybe more of a medium burn, non-consensual shapeshifting, running away from your problems at a professional level, the labyrinth au everyone asked for, with Lucio as the Goblin king
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 02:43:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20987513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shepavellan/pseuds/shepavellan
Summary: Krista knew better than to make wishes. Out loud.  On a solstice.  With a possibly magic crystal in her hands.  Given to her by her grandmother who had been the very one to tell her not to make foolhardy wishes and warned her to be careful of all things magical right before disappearing without a trace.But life has been hard lately, and really, what can one silly little wish do...?----This time it's Labyrinth, Vesuvia style





	Within You

**Author's Note:**

> I told ya I was gonna do it, didn't I

_No one can blame you for walking away_  
But too much rejection, uh-huh  
No love injection, nothing 

_Life can be easy_  
It’s not always swell  
Don’t tell me truth hurts, little girl  
‘Cause it hurts like hell 

Logic said Krista should be paying attention to her lecture. She’d missed far too many classes already, and was quite in danger of failing. By all rights, she should be watching her professor, taking notes, and praying she made it through her finals.

Reality however, had different plans, and instead she was gazing out the window to the overcast sky, mind a thousand miles and seven years away, in her past. When life had been easy and the biggest concern in her life had been acne, not whether or not she’d just wasted thousands of dollars on an education that would take her nowhere. Oh the _stories_ she’d used to believe. That some day she’d go on some grand adventure, that excitement was always just around the corner, that she’d get to defeat some cruel villain trying to steal her freedom and her name and be a hero.

Little had she known all that awaited her was a too small apartment and a class with a monotone teacher who couldn’t even be bothered to do more than read straight from the textbook. The one she’d paid _far_ too much for.

A long sigh escaped her, earning her a sympathetic smile from a nearby classmate. At least they were as bored as she was...On the other hand, maybe that was worse.

_If only Grandma Sao were here,_ she thought wistfully. But then, what would she even do? Her grandmother couldn’t save her from a boring English class. _She might have,_ the childish voice in her supplied unhelpfully. _Maybe she’d take you wherever she went, somewhere far away..._

Krista mentally batted the voice away. She hadn’t had such flights of fancy since her adolescence, and she wasn’t going to start again now. Her grandmother had wandered off when Krista was only fourteen, and no one had been able to find her. With luck, she was alive somewhere, confused but healthy, and that was all that mattered. What _didn’t_ matter was the silly dream Krista had as a child where her grandmother had told her she was traveling to another world, and that someday, if she wanted, Krista could join her. It didn’t matter that she still remembered the rules her grandmother had instilled in her from childhood, to never reveal her name to a stranger, to choose her words carefully, to never bet more than she was willing to lose, and most importantly, to always be careful what she wished for. The stories she had told her about when people forgot these rules, and the more fun ones, where people used them to their advantage...

But they were nothing other than stories, and it was best to remember that.

The professor dismissing the class brought her back to the present, and Krista scowled as she realized she had daydreamed the whole lecture away. She’d be lucky to pass this class at all. And to think, she’d thought an English class would be so _simple_ in the beginning. She should have known better than to think such things. She then had to repress a sigh at _that_ thought as she collected her supplies. The universe was not plotting against her because she’d had the audacity to be optimistic, no matter how much it felt that way at times. The past few months - years if she were being honest - had been beyond difficult. After the disappearance of her grandmother, her life had taken a downturn. Her mother had been understandably heartbroken, but rather than reaching out to her daughter and coming together in their grief, she had withdrawn into herself. It was an ultimately human response that Krista didn’t blame her for, but it had strained their relationship all the same, and she doubted it would ever fully recover. Since she had moved away for college they had hardly spoken, and it had been months since she’d received so much as a text. Most recently, her grades had started to lower, her mind drifted often, and she found herself often wondering what the _point_ of any of it was. Her life felt entirely performative, like she did everything merely because it was required and expected of her. The obvious answer was to seek what she truly wanted in life, but she had no idea where to even begin. Her heart felt pulled to some distant place she couldn’t identify, and at times she was unbearably homesick without being able to name a location she even deemed home. Perhaps, that itself, was the problem.

Still, the quiet, fantastical, hungry voice within her whispered that it was because her home was merely out of reach at the moment, and if she would just let herself _believe_ again…

_No,_ she thought, shaking her head firmly once more as she strode down the hallways. She would not allow such thoughts to prevail. She was a logical, adult woman. She did not believe in silly things like magic, or karma, or bad luck.

Just as she had that thought, she turned the corner to see the glass doors leading outside, and the clouds parted to begin pouring rain on the ground below.

Was it possible for an inner voice to be quietly smug?

* * *

Sopping wet, irritated, and shivering, Krists trudged through the door of her tiny apartment and just _barely_ managed to resist slamming the door closed. Only the thought of her truly venomous neighbor, who looked for any reason to make Krista's life miserable, coming over to snip at her had her shutting it gently.

After changing into dry, if cold, clothes, Krista dragged herself into her room, running a towel over her damp curls that were promising to frizz soon. She flopped down into her desk chair, and rubbed the skin between her eyebrows, futilely trying to stave off a brewing headache. Really, things weren't so bad. Others had it much worse. She had no right to complain.

Even as she thought this, the traitorous voice within her told her it didn't make her life any easier to know others had their own problems. She heaved a sigh as she looked up, glancing over the items on her desk.

Her laptop sat unopened, as she knew if she did she would immediately be greeted by her unfinished essay. Leaving it up was an attempt to get her to focus rather than distracting herself on other websites. Instead she had just stopped opening the damned thing. Her dream journal sat in the opposite corner, also used much less these days. Besides that and an empty coffee cup with a butterfly painted on the mug, there were precious few knick-knacks. The lack of space still managed to make it look cluttered however. The only thing on her desk that looked particularly nice (and not in the process of gathering dust) was a glass orb, resting on a holder she had ordered some years ago. The orb itself had been a gift from her grandmother some years ago, shortly before her disappearance. The last thing she had given her, in fact. Grandma Sao had been adept and twirling it about in her fingers and over her hands, delighting a young Krista as she told her stories and said if Krista looked very hard, she could see the stories coming to life within the orb. As a child, she had of course believed this, and excitedly told her grandmother that she could see the stories she weaved, fairy tale creatures and heroes alike coming to life within the gleaming crystal. She'd imagined it, naturally. But the crystal was special to her all the same, and shortly before leaving for college she'd been browsing online and discovered a stand meant for a crystal ball, fashioned to look like butterfly wings and ram horns of all things. Strange as the design was, she'd fallen immediately in live with it and ordered it. To her surprise, it had been the perfect size for her crystal, and it now permanently rested on the curves of the wings and horns. Never once since it had been gifted to her had the crystal gathered so much as a speck of dust or a smudge, despite Krista's daily ritual of her running her fingers over it briefly whenever she returned home. She'd wondered often what material it must be made of, but sadly, her grandmother was no longer around to ask.

Another sigh escaped her as she sank deeper into her chair, glancing idly at the calendar that hung above her desk. She thought about her grandmother often, it was true, but she wasn't normally so stuck in her mind. For whatever reason, she just couldn't get her out of her head today. On a whim, she picked up the crystal and rolled it between her palms, never quite able to do the tricks her grandmother had been able to with it. But holding it made her somehow feel close to her. As before, some childish part of her wishes fervently that she could be wherever her grandmother was, and she quashed the desire down irritably. Of course she missed her, but silly wish was really nostalgia for a simpler time. When she was young and not burdened with the responsibilities and trials of adulthood, when she'd believed in magic and fairies, and that wishes came true. Whether you wanted them to or not.

That was one thing her grandmother had always been very strict about. _Be careful what you wish for._ Never wish for something aloud unless you are prepared for what will happen if someone hears that wish and decides to grant it. Many of the stories she'd told her had been centered around this very idea. And so Krista had always been very particular about the words she chose to use in response. 'I wish' was a phrase she hardly ever used, and even in the rare occasion she did, it always made her heart flutter with anxiety and the back of her neck prickle. As though she could feel someone watching. Listening. Waiting for her to say just the right words.

Silly, really.

Her eyes flicked to the calendar again, noting absently today was the Spring solstice. It would be a _truly_ stupid idea to wish for something on a day like this, she thought on a humorless laugh. On a day where, supposedly, the boundaries between this world and the next were thin. Where her wishes were just that much more likely to be heard.

But...she didn't believe in such things anyway. ...Did she?

Krista paused, the crystal between her palms coming to a halt. No. No of course she didn't. Magic was for children. Faeries were stories. The phrase 'be careful what you wish for' was only meant to teach people to think their desires through before acting on them. Really, wishing to be taken somewhere far away would leave her nothing but frustrated at best.

On the other hand, she'd been fighting her inner voice telling her that magic wasn't so unbelievable all day, and perhaps if she did this, it would crush that little irritant. For a while at least. Remind herself that such things were only fantasies.

She licked her lips, throat going a bit tight. Doing this would be a bad idea...or no, no it _wouldn't,_ because nothing at all would happen. Of course not. She had nothing to be nervous about. Her grandmother hadn't had any way of knowing Krista would take her stories far too seriously. It was time to give them up. She could do this. She _could._

Her eyes left the calendar and returned to her crystal, and she held it up to the light. She felt her lips twitch a moment at the half-remembered story of a fox getting lost in a maze, how she'd imagined she could see his confused expression within the glass. She took a shaky breath, cursing her pointless nerves. _Nothing_ was going to happen.

"I…" her voice cracked and she scowled, clearing her throat and continuing with a voice that sounded much braver than she felt. "I wish someone would come and take me away from this awful place."

And for a moment, there really was nothing. A moment just long enough that she felt herself begin to relax, even as a small part of her wilted in disappointment.

Then, the storm outside suddenly grew much more intense than seemed possible in mere seconds, and rain pelted the walls of ber complex so loudly it was nearly deafening. Wind howled, thunder crashed, her window shattered inward, and she couldn't help a startled yelp. A crack of lightning accompanied the boom, bright enough that she had to raise her arms to cover her eyes as she bolted up from her chair, causing it to clatter to the ground. When the thunder faded and the rain had slowed to a more reasonable pace once more, she slowly lowered her arms, and her eyes widened at what she saw.

A man stood before her shattered window, boots resting gingerly on the broken bits of glass on the ground. But he was unlike any man she'd seen before. He was dressed in fine clothes that would better suit a renaissance fair than anything else, in shades of red gold and white. A scarlet cape draped over his left arm, concealing it from view. Below his swept back blonde locks an ivory mask concealed the upper half of his face, but Krista could easily see it was bonded to him, not sewn or glued to his skin, but rather looking like it had grown from it. Obsidian horns curled up and away from the mask, curling back over his head, making the blood red gaze currently boring into her all that much more sinister.

She gasped at him, at a complete loss for words as the wind from outside made his clothes billow around him and her curls drift about her face. He was the one to break their gaze first, eyes snapping to the crystal she still held tightly in her now white-knuckled grip. His expression turned to one turned snarling fury.

_"Where_ did you get that?!"

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this one's so short, my first chapters are usually longer, but I'm much more excited for the middle of this story than I usually am, hopefully we'll get some more length going soon.


End file.
